21Dec 09

Well, that’s that: the machine has been given a good beating and we can look forward to “Bulls On Parade” on the festive Argos ad next year. I will admit I didn’t think the RATM crew could do it: I was wrong. But as the dust settles on this most fractious and increasingly entertaining Christmas No.1 race, who has actually benefited? Here’s my round-up of winners and losers.

Joe McElderry: He’ll be Number 1 next week most likely, but while the ‘battle’ was never about him this puts him firmly in the “Leon Jackson” box, not the “Will Young” one. On the other hand, the constant refrain from the judges during the series was that he had a musical theatre kind of a voice, and this might nudge him in that direction and away from the fickle world of pop. Before dabbing your eyes over Joe’s lost dreams, it’s worth noting that if he’d sold as many as Alexandra did with “Hallelujah” last year, he’d have been #1, Rage or no Rage.

Rage Against The Machine: It’s good profile-raising stuff for them and their other material will do well from it, though unless MP3s come with reading lists in their IP3 tags the ‘educational’ element of RATM may be a little missing. The downsizing of their song’s target from “institutional racism” to “Simon Cowell” is probably a fairer reflection of their listeners’ concerns anyway but it’s left them looking a little… cuddlier… than once they did (and their participation in a classic British radio brouhaha has only helped). They themselves have joined in with gusto, of course: “RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE THANKS ‘EVERY FAN AND FREEDOM FIGHTER’ FOR THE ‘ANARCHY CHRISTMAS MIRACLE OF 2009′” blared their press release.

Simon Cowell: Cowell has not come out of this terribly well (though obviously not materially poorer): he handled it remarkably badly, turning just another web campaign into an actual issue by taking public note of it. In the last few days he’s come on-message, talking about the excitement of the competition, etc etc. But it’s his early churlishness that’s the lingering – and rather delicious – memory. The outcome will hardly dent his personal power, of course, and his public image thrives on dislike – but the effectiveness of the campaign might mean his “first among equals” prominence on his own properties needs to be dialled back.

The X Factor: With 18 million viewers – 17.5 million more than the maximum number of RATM buyers this week – the X Factor isn’t going anywhere, and it’s wishful thinking to imagine this damages ITV’s biggest light entertainment show since Morecambe And Wise. The Dubai-esque follies reportedly planned – “World X-Factor”, 5 judges, a ‘novelties’ category – will do for the programme in the end, but that won’t have anything to do with Rage. As I’ve argued before, what this result exposes is the problem of the winner’s single being so vestigial to the rest of the show: the storyline is over, the narrative complete, the single is just a “happy ever after” and who cares about the details of that? The X Factor’s mistake was to get to the position where its winner NOT getting a No.1 was a much more interesting story than getting one.

The Christmas No.1: as a lot of people have pointed out, the Christmas No.1 isn’t generally much good anyway. I’m still not convinced this idea that there’s a “tradition” of battles at Christmas for the #1 slot has any very deep roots, but we had a battle this year and a lot of fun it was. The big loser here may be the BBC, as the knock-on-effect of this is that its attempt to keep the corpse of TOTP alive for a once a year family shindig is now going to require some tricky politicking.

Real Music: here we get into more contentious areas. The “RATM is a win for real music” argument – and it’s being made by Rage themselves so we should take it seriously – comes in many different forms. At its mildest, it’s just opposition to a light ent show getting droit de seigneur over the charts at Christmas, and saying that a loss for the X-Factor makes pop more exciting. This is true, though a lot of people who normally don’t give a monkeys about pop or the charts suddenly coming over all Paul-Morley-In-1982 about them might raise the odd eyebrow.

Beyond that, though, the idea that Rage beating Joe is good for real music rests on two exaggerations: an exaggeration of the hegemony of the X-Factor, and more seriously an exaggeration of its typicality. The X-Factor gets one or two number one hits per year, and is hit-or-miss in launching its stars careers: it is powerful but it cares mostly about itself, not the wider world of pop. And the music that gets to number one off the back of the X-Factor is almost as distanced from the rest of the chart as RATM’s is (very few of the pop fans I know had kind words to say about “The Climb”).

Two things I’ve seen held up as self-evident truths on why the X-Factor has stifled the industry: it means the charts are full of crap ballads, and it stops record labels investing in artists. The only problem is that the charts aren’t full of ballads – charity singles aside there hasn’t been a #1 ballad this year! And given that two of the #1s there have been were by Dizzee Rascal, a critic’s darling since 2002 who was given an awful lot of time to deliver financially by a big label, it looks like “not investing in artists” isn’t the problem either.

In other words, the idea that the X-Factor music sucks isn’t interchangeable with the idea that pop sucks. The only element of “real music” that l’affaire RATM helps is the ancient rock v pop, or alternative v pop binary. Will the win have any longer-term effects? Well, the closest parallel to this isn’t the Sex Pistols and “God Save The Queen”, it’s metal monsters Lordi winning Eurovision in 2005: a similar irruption of ROCK into a staid citadel of pop, pushed on by bottom-up public opinion. The consequences of the Lordi win were a rash of rock-esque Eurovision entries, and then business as usual. I expect much the same here.

The Charts: A spike in public interest and sales of close on a million look like a big win for the charts. But this would be an optimistic reading. The purpose of the charts – its mission statement, if you like – is to reflect which current music is most popular among British listeners. The reasons for said popularity may not be pure, but there’s a difference between the charts being swayed by something interesting happening somewhere else (like a TV show or a World Cup) and the charts as a playground of gesture. On the other hand, they’ve proved surprisingly robust so far so I almost certainly shouldn’t worry.

Social Media: You’ll hear this one a lot – the RATM win was a triumph for social media! And it was, though ironically the X-Factor is one of the most social media driven TV shows around – facebook fan groups, message boards and Twitter backchannels are vital in keeping a conversation around the show going, and the production team pay them close attention. The moment at which I realised the RATM campaign might actually work was when I read an ILX poster pointing out that most of the people on his Twitter feed saying “Go Rage!” were the same ones who’d been hashtagging and watching the show all season.

So this wasn’t really “old media” vs “new media”. RATM’s success is a victory for a particular style of social media – the quick-hit campaign, the flashmob, an impromptu community beating (or subverting) an established one, “doing it for the Lulz”. The people behind the campaign, as the BBC noted, had tried this before, with the rather less “real music”-ish aim of getting Rick Astley to #1. There’s a “social media for its own sake” feel to flashmobs and the same is to some extent true of this.

Sony: well, duh, good day at the office for them. And it’s also worth thumbing-up the organisers for linking their campaign to the Shelter charity as soon as it got momentum – 70 grand raised for the homeless at Christmas is the one unarguably positive outcome of all this.

The Great British Public: The hangover may be lengthy and tedious and culminate in a Richard Curtis film about the organisers. But for now real winners here are us: while there’s lots of interesting things to say about the RATM incident the overriding thing about it is that it’s funny. How could it not be? Cowell and Rage are (in public at least) both caricatures: when two such collide the results are often comical.

The basic gag is fine – though it got swamped by rhetoric soon enough – but the joy this week has been in the incidental details. Joe throwing darts at a picture of Zach De La Rocha. Rage calling their single’s buyers “freedom fighters”. Mail commenters praising RATM for being anti-EU. The BBC telling a band not to sing “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” and being surprised at what happens. The one word which sums the whole thing up is “pantomime” – everyone playing their big, campy part to entertain us all. And why not? It’s the season for it after all.

Comments

Haven’t heard Joe’s version yet, but I think “The Climb” is a pretty good song; of the original version, a frequent blogger said, “Miley soars through the platitudes with ease and restraint” – preferred it to “Hoedown Throwdown” and “Party In The USA,” he did (though either of those two might have been a more interesting X Factor choice).

As far as I know (too lazy to check), all of the American Idol winner’s songs have been originals, to no particular effect. I can’t see it making a creative difference in the way that Mark wants unless the winners get to choose the song, which’d be awful hard to manage (you don’t know who’s going to win, so several different songs would have to be written and recorded in advance, and even then I don’t see where the performer gets a huge input, or would have much time to be involved in the process, given that the performer is busy prepping for the next week’s show).

As for Lex’s suggestion: On AI, at least for the last couple of years, a quickie studio version of each singer’s track is recorded before each show, and those are available for download; as far as I know, none has ever charted during the week it was performed, though interestingly a few did chart last May in the week after the final show, though not as high as the “real” single, and they dropped off immediately.

Also, not that this challenges Tom’s point about what the winner’s single means in relation to the show and the purchasers of the winner’s single, but X Factor has produced a couple of stars, and American Idol has produced stars and superstars, though you can’t count on it to. But a point Tom alluded to above is that the X Factor viewers aren’t altogether the same as the week-in/week-out consumers of pop singles, who are generally a bit younger and likely to be more committed to a particular genre (r&b, say, or dance) than the X Factor audience is. The talent shows tend to reward versatility and chops, whereas after the show the singers – at least some of them – will need to focus on a particular audience segment, a deep one rather than a broad one.

- The mainstream press were very late in picking up that RATM actually had a chance of number one, even after the midweeks were out. That 5 Live appearance was essentially as the filler light entertainment item before the news, while the attitude until about Thursday when Cowell stepped up his side of the pantomime bargain was that these interlopers would be seen off soon enough.

- Should Cowell really care that much? Susan Boyle has sold about 1.3m in four weeks and has the Christmas number one album, which when added to Leona’s success this year, and Alexandra’s to a lesser extent, isn’t exactly going to leave him penniless.

What would be your reading of why Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah, which at least initially was far higher profile a campaign and at a time when the press believed Facebook groups were making a difference and hence The Future (it’s Twitter hashtags now), did so comparatively badly last year, especially as it’s a song Alexandra fans might well have been buying too given Miley’s Climb is at 30 this week?

If X Factor is here to stay, then maybe the way to go is to have annual themes. You could bring in a respected songwriter from a particular genre as 5th judge (not mentor) to write the winner’s song. Start the ball rolling in the early stages and say we’re looking for someone who can sing showtunes or upbeat pop or ballads (keeping the genres as broad as possible). You would only need 4 or 5 themes on rotation to keep it fresh. There would even be room for rock (in it’s most radio-friendly guise). If it was done in the right way, then the story of the song could be just as intriguing as the story of the winning finalist.

Yet – the two who got to the final couldn’t have been more bland and LACKING in any kind of “X-Factor”. Joe is a handsome enough little lad, with a reasonable singing voice but I get the impression his votes were based on how many wet gussets he caused down the local comprehensive than his actual talent. The fact they gave him a Westlife-dull ballad for his “No. 1 Hit” doomed him even further.

Cowell’s mob need to start taking a few chances – not just putting through a load of carbon copy Mariahs and spare George Michaels. The X Factor by definition should be about launching something different but it seems intent on playing it safe. X for Xerox anyone?

But this is the “problem” w/a public vote. The X-Factor contestants this year who offered the best representation of “pop” outside the show’s own confines were Miss Frank – wall-of-sound harmonies plus smart girl rapping, they could have been a Shangri-Las-meets-Mis-Teeq proposition and were from a “pop perspective” the best thing on the show, easily. The first week they actually rapped in their track, out they went.

That was a shame, but it’s only a problem if you think the X-Factor is somehow about pop or trying to find ‘pop stars’. It’s not – you don’t get 18 million by worrying about something as piddly as pop music. It’s a reality TV show* that uses a vague shared experience of pop as a pretext.

*I always want to use ‘game show’ or something but they’re really not – rtv stuff is it’s own thing by now with its own rules and success conditions.

I am normally quite resistant to saying good things about Tom’s articles (because everyone else goes on about how good they are and I am contrary and cantankerous) but I think this one is really good, the proof (for me) being it made me interested in something I didn’t really care about. I saw RATM once on the telly and the guitarist had a Shaft t-shirt. That is really the only time they have ever made an impression on me. I think Joe’s record is quite good for the first half or so, but I have only heard it once (after he won).

Of course there’s nothing to stop an enterprising producer (or Cowell himself since he no doubt has the first option on everybody) picking up on Miss Frank or anyone and giving them a career. A few previous losers have carried on, not least Diana Vickers who’s garnering good reviews in the West End production of Little Voice at the moment.

The trouble with rock (and rockism) in X Factor is that it would do no good to your credibility as a rock singer to do well on X Factor, as it’s the kind of thing that rock is supposed to rebel against, which was the awkwardness with Jamie Afro. On the other hand Kelly Clarkson hasn’t done badly as a pop-rock chick, albeit, as thefatgit puts it, in its most radio-friendly guise.

Tom, I’m not sure I agree with your inclusion of the BBC in the list of losers – it might make the Christmas TOTP tricky (but no more so than playing the bleeped version of a sweary rap hit) but beyond that I think the expansion of X Factor makes a convincing case for a return of TOTP. Once again we have a pop show on TV creating watercooler moments, but whereas years ago acts were on TOTP because they were in the chart, now they’re in the chart because they were on X Factor. Of course the BEPs, Rihanna etc would be in the upper reaches of the Top 40 anyway, but having a select group of acts given an X Factor boost, thus hogging the number one spot for much of the autumn, is bloody irritating, and it would be good to have a show covering a wider range of acts than those chosen for this special favour.

the thing is, i love rock, but the entire concept of “credibility as a rock singer” is very extremely tremendously threadbare now, if not an actual pestilence, more than a half century after elvis went into the army ect ect* — and its use as an excuse not to be thinking to turn RTV stages like this into the forum for yr own mclaren-esque intervention is, and has been all this decade really, more of a cowardice than a principle; more of a sgn of lack of intellectual, artistc and political gumption than the opposite — of course if you don’t bother even trying, no one can prove that you wouldn;t have walked off with the honours… it’s this internalised defeatist cynicism i don’t lke being confused with bold refusal of taint, i guess… if you maintain your radicalism simply by contnually making the battlefield smaller, this is another way of saying you are losing the war at your own hand…

Erithian – there’s a swathe of Radio-friendly rock (best example -Nickleback) that they do over the pond which doesn’t happen here. I can’t think of any British equivalents that could, conceivably, work on the X-Factor.

Plus – does “Since U Been Gone” partially rip off “When I Argue I See Shapes” by Idlewild?

I suppose the music itself is off-topic here, but to compare Joe’s “Climb” to Miley’s, on Joe’s they make his path up the mountain far too smooth and event-free; of course we know from the first note of Miley’s that she’s heading upward too, but her version doesn’t feel like a foregone conclusion, given her raw bartender’s* voice and the variety of space/nonspace that producer John Shanks puts into the arrangement. So she comes across much better.

Wiki doesn’t indicate the producer on McElderry’s, but presumably it’s not Shanks.

*Chris Willman said on an old Rolling Country thread that Miley has the speaking voice of a 40-year-old Tennessee barmaid, implying that this doesn’t really come through in her singing, but he’s wrong: it does.

I can’t imagine what a McLarenesque intervention on X Factor would be, or why one would want one.

I only dipped in a couple of times via YouTube, but I get the impression that this year’s X Factor was pretty bad on its own terms; whereas American Idol always gives you a few talents who are coming in from their own angles (Allison Iraheta, Jason Castro, Brooke White).

i think there are three reasons why it seems not something they’d opt to risk, and enter in the first place:

i. a perceived built-in prejudice against broad-definition rock among the judges — tho this was surely less an issue when ozzy osbourne’s wife-and-manager was one of them…
ii. the issue of playing yr own songs — the project is about being supplied songs and arrangements by the judges, so it’s a svengali talent show in a way, judging best deployment of off-the-peg material, and rightly or wrongly this remains very diffcult i think for rock bands to countenance… a “good” rockband by definition makes its name via its own songs?
iii. the issue of becoming good by playing together live somewhere off-radar: again, a rock-centric shibboleth, but difficult to see how persuade people who want to go into rock that this is something they should foreswear? band identity or brand develops as a kind of lived manifestation of how the band “arranges” is own songs, as fits its particular individual’s styles, and the rub-together of their individual judgments into a collective mutual tolerance

which means that a rock band fails to fit into the format for much the same reasons that new song-writing can’t be incorporated: it would seem to add enormous faffy layers of slowed decision-making

i think all three would be REALLY interestng parameters for a smart band with intellectual ambition to play around with

as to why they wouldn’t do well at the outcome stage: i don’t know that anyone’s in a position to make that call — so far, what there’s been of rock or rap has been weeded out early, but it’s also been pretty spavined as a recognisable representative of worthwhile rock or rap

actually i haven;t watched enough to be certain about that last judgment

This X Factor also had a few “controversies” along the way – obviously talented vocalists getting voted out (by public and judges) before obviously untalented vocalists, a fair few “fix” rumours swirling around – which would have pissed off a number of fans of the programme.

Do many rock/alternative performers even care about politically-charged McLarenesque interventions in the mainstream these days? I think the idea of personally expressive art is heavily dominant over the idea of change-the-world firebrandism among alternative types: most shun the X Factor because it wouldn’t be the best vehicle for their self-expressive artistic sensibilities, not through any sense of defeatism. There is no battleground, basically. And to an extent, they may have a point: look at the reception that Kelly Clarkson got when she tried dark, bitter self-expression out – very well! – on My December. Looking at the alternative acts on my 2009 list – Fever Ray, The xx, Yeah Yeah Yeahs – I can’t see what good even going near the X Factor would do them.

I can’t imagine what a McLarenesque intervention on X Factor would be, or why one would want one

I can’t really imagine why someone would consider this a post inviting generous response, as opposed to shutting down the conversation. Anyway, my part in the conversation IS shutting down, not because Frank is being annoyingly Socratic but because I’m tired and busy, and have a ton of stuff to get through before Wednesday. If anyone else wants to guess what I’m getting at you’re welcome.

Fwiw, a couple of rock performers (though not interventionist rock) have done very well on American Idol, which has a somewhat different format from X Factor. Daughtry sells in huge numbers, and David Cook is still in business.

Yeah, that came out harsher than intended, but what in the X Factor/Idol format invites an intervention, and what would an intervention be? If you don’t sound good to the judges you don’t make it to the stage; the attitude “we’re just having fun, and we’re not too concerned if we make it” is the closest I’d think of something that would work, and in some ways that was how Adam Lambert came across on American Idol, and the judges generally loved him. And Jason Castro had an air of “I’m too stoned to get it together in rehearsal.” (Btw, as far as I know, he was the first to bring “Hallelujah” to reality TV talent shows, though the song had already built itself up via fictional TV.) But anything confrontational, say by performers who pulled a bait and switch on the judges, is likely to seem juvenile or rude; and if it doesn’t, it won’t be an intervention, since it will come across as well-trod artistic integrity (which is how RATM come across).

One might argue that Cowell himself engineered the most McLarenesque moment on this year’s X Factor, when Louis Walsh accused him of having made up Gummo (question, if Cowell were to invent an indie director, in what ways would he resemble Harmony Korine?)

I must say that while I find X Factor basically unwatchable, I usually quite enjoy American Idol. But this might just be because I get my kicks by NOT being part of the wider conversation (Am Idol being a mildly esoteric taste here in Blighty).

American Idol is also far far better at producing decent pop stars too. The best of X Factor – Leona, Alexandra, JLS – I enjoy but still treat as an indulgence; I appreciate them but probably wouldn’t miss them if they disappeared. The best of AI – Fantasia, Kelly C, even Jordin Sparks who I don’t even like that much, they’re obviously proper, distinctive artists, not cheapo UK versions of artists.

I mean, it’s obvious that US pop stars >>>>>>> UK pop stars and always have done, but American Idol/X Factor really shows us up.

Well in pure population terms Lex you’d expect AI to produce 5 actually good/successful/whatever pop stars to every 1 the X-Factor produces: I guess it’s fulfilled that remit with Leona (even if her “indie ballad” direction is the worst).

Well in pure population terms Lex you’d expect AI to produce 5 actually good/successful/whatever pop stars to every 1 the X-Factor produces

Well, “good” more likely than “successful,” since the bigger the country, the smaller percentage of its population gets to be stars.

But as for Idol winners who’ve crossed to Britain, other than Kelly Clarkson and Jordin Sparks there really haven’t been any, as far as I can tell, though Jennifer Hudson (soul/r&b singer, 7th place in 2004, went on to a role in Dreamgirls) has hit the UK singles chart three times and may well do more. And Chris Daughtry (rock singer, 4th place in 2006) just charted this year in the UK with his band Daughtry, entering and re-entering the chart while remaining pure and tick-free on poptimists. His sales are mammoth in the U.S., and if he keeps that up he might eventually get some of the attention you give to Nickelback. Discogs.com is unwieldy, so I can’t tell if he’s gotten a UK album release, and I don’t know of a site equivalent to everyhit that compiles old sales and ranking figures for the UK album chart.

Carrie Underwood’s Some Hearts sold even more than Kelly Clarkson’s Breakaway, its 7 million sales coming a year or two later, which makes the numbers more impressive, given that CD sales have been steadily plummeting. She’s country but she crosses to the pop charts in the U.S.; her sound is big and brassy enough that I’m surprised she didn’t cross over in Britain. Don’t even think her albums have been released in the U.K., though I don’t know.

Beyond that, Fantasia (soul/r&b), who won in 2004, hasn’t crossed big in the U.S., much less in Britain, though she’s still in business. Kellie Pickler and Bucky Covington, who finished sixth and eighth respectively in 2006, both are hitting the middle range of the country charts, Pickler benefiting from being associated with the Carrie-Taylor wave of young pop-country women. Katharine McPhee (pop), 2nd place in 2006, has had minor pop success, enough to get a second album, which has just leaked, and she could cross to Britain with the right material. Same with teenthrob David Archuleta (2nd place 2008), though he hasn’t sold much after his great first single “Crush.”

Also, there’s a Nashville Star competition, though it may be defunct now (Wikipedia isn’t saying so, but there was no 2009 version); it’s big success was 2003′s third-place finisher Miranda Lambert, who’s not crossed to Britain but has impressed critics, since she’s the closest current mainstream Nashville has come to producing a punk rocker, and that’s why you’ve heard of her (also, she’s very good, even if her new album is a disappointment). And Chris Young, who won in 2006, had a country hit this year with a marital smoocher called “Gettin’ You Home (The Black Dress Song).”

Surprised by how happy I was by the RATM result, if only because Simon Cowell’s sense of entitlement over the X-Factor’s right to the Christmas number one every single year, no matter how bad the pop star or lazy the record, was so enraging.

Hopefully this will inspire some actual pop stars to try and beat them next year. It felt like everyone basically stopped trying for the last few years.

In response to the ‘Real Music’ argument. I don’t think anyone is claiming that pop is not real music. Its just that the very narrow and specific form of pop produced by the X-factor is not real music. It is manufactured and false.

Real music is made by musicians and written by musicians. The people who win and otherwise place in the X-factor are not musicians. They are faces for a money making machine. There is no passion in what they do as it is not their music that they are performing. They get paid no matter the tune they mindlessly burble into a handy mic, though they don’t get paid nearly as much as Cowell and his cronies. Real music is created, not simply produced.

‘Real Music’ can belong to any genre, be it pop, rock, metal, country, swing, etc etc. It is not defined by the instruments used to make it, nor is it defined by a specific set of rules regarding rythm and construction. Real Music is defined by only one thing: it is created by musicians from nothing.

The X-factor is not real music, never has been, and neither is anything that that cynical svengali Cowell has anything to do with. He is a manufacturer of fantasies, and not the nice kind with fairies and ponies. He creates a fantasy that anyone can become a star, be someone special, and live a life of luxury and celebrity without having to work bloody hard for it. That is the main objection I have to the X-factor and programs like it. I pity Joe, he will learn soon enough that the world will forget him in a month or so and he’ll be trawling crappy nightclubs for less money than he thought. He’ll learn how hard it really is and that no-one really cares. The marketing machine will move on to the next series and the machine will begin to process its latest product.

The people who win and otherwise place in the X-factor are not musicians… it is not their music that they are performing… Real Music is defined by only one thing: it is created by musicians from nothing.
But this Real Music standard is *far* too demanding. Most of the best song-writers aren’t great players let alone the best performers more generally (stage presence, image, projecting personality, handling media, etc.). Ella Fitzgerald didn’t write her songs, Aretha writes only very few of hers. And so on. The idea that everyone has to write their own songs etc. is a post-Beatles development which works fine in some cases, but certainly not in all. It didn’t even work for Dylan – he’s a great song-writer but (mostly) an indifferent performer.

Would you be satisfied if they had a parallel show to X-factor just for the song-writer side of things – ‘X-Factor: Tin pan alley’? (Perhaps the game is you have to write a new hit/standard for Beyonce or Alicia)

Or would you be satisfied by ‘X factor: Post Beatles edition’ where all contestants have to be singer-songwriters (and do only their own stuff)? (See also ‘X factor: Battle of the Bands’.)

re 55 I agree with most of your post but I take issue with ‘Dylan – he’s a great song-writer but (mostly) an indifferent performer’ – I’d agree that he’s an inconsistent performer but more often than not he’s a fantastic performer of both his own and others’ songs

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